CFD analysis on velocity and temperature distribution of airflow inside model building with windcatcher

Abstract

Windcatchers are ventilation instruments used for obtaining the characteristic of cooling. They have been utilized in the buildings for a long time ago in countries with hot dry atmospheres especially in the Middle East. Natural ventilation is progressively utilized in the modern building to limit the use of non- sustainable supply. This study describes another alternative for adopting clean energy in buildings by applying windcatcher on buildings. This present study analyses between two types of windcatcher (one-sided and two-sided windcatcher) by varying the inlet velocity of airflow. This study aims to investigate wind velocity and temperature distribution in a model building with one outlet opening position using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulation. Reynolds-Average Navier Stokes (RANS) approach with the turbulence model of standard k-ϵ was used to perform the simulation. It is shown that the two-sided windcatcher is more effective than the one-sided windcatcher. Two-sided windcatcher induces a high volume of airflow inside the building compared to the one-sided windcatcher.